Aug 31, 2016

Thoughts About Illustrating

I think it's been ages since I draw digitally, like full digital from scratch, just like what I did every day, seven to eight years ago when I was still in college. Today feels so meaningful. Shortly as I finished my meeting with Diana, I went to Kitty's studio to paint with other creatives. There we painted things randomly, shared our paints and stories. It's really fun, I never did things like this, painting together with other illustrators and painters. I feel so happy to see other people do their painting, the way they brush the paint, the way they start their painting, their color preferences. As most of us brought our own paint and brushes, I got to try the paint that I've never tried before. It's really fun. I wish illustrators and painters in Jakarta can gather around to do things like this more often.

Back when I only had an old laptop and a mouse, I was mesmerised when I saw Danny Roberts' fashion illustration blog. It was very new to me, I was hooked instantly. I remember that I tried to do digital illustration on Photoshop using a mouse. It was fine back then, I didn't find anything wrong with illustrating using a mouse. I then illustrated lots of bloggers and uploaded them to this blog. Sea of Shoes, Style Bubble, Karla Deras, Gary Pepper are some of the bloggers I illustrated. Diana is one of them too, I wasn't a friend of her back then. I remember I was so into Gary Pepper's blog and I drew her. It was when she still had her line, Gary Pepper Vintage. Instagram wasn't even a cool thing before 2010, so I emailed her my illustration and said that I love her style. She replied my email and even uploaded my illustration to her Facebook page. I was so happy!

After I graduated from college, I was working as an account executive, so drawing wasn't a day to day activity. But I still draw every now and then and uploaded my illustrations to this blog. My boyfriend lent me his Wacom so I could learn and draw better digitally. It was clearly an improvement to my drawing, here's the post when I just started using Wacom. One day my boyfriend wanted his Wacom back because he needed to use it, so he insisted me to buy myself a Wacom. I was a bit hesitant because I thought I don't need it urgently and my salary was pretty tight for even thinking about buying a Wacom. But I finally did, and I never regreted my decision to buy a Wacom. One of the best things I did for my illustrating career in years. I wouldn't have illustrate that much if I didn't buy a Wacom. You can see some of my thoughts from 2012 in these posts, here and here. P.S., I'm still using the Wacom until now, even made this illustration below with that small Bamboo Wacom.

I feel a bit emotional now. The memories of how I started illustrating again, when I was still in college, the tools that I'm using, my brush strokes, my color palettes, everything is continuously developing up until today. Through this link you can see my progress in illustrating starting from years ago. Illustrating has always been my favorite thing to do and I never thought that it will be my main job. Glad that I finally be able to convince myself to illustrate full time and left my job as an account executive, public relation executive, copywriter, notification strategist employee. I also never expected that I would even teach on workshop or private coaching session for illustrating or other creative subject. I think good things happen to those who least expected, but have work pretty hard to improve themselves. More things to come, more dreams to achieve!